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If culture means a set of shared rules of conduct (mores) and common exposure to certain ideas (if this second category is not superfluous), then cultures exist in many, or perhaps any, groups of individuals. If culture is nothing else than national culture, one of the two words is superfluous, just like “cultural culture” or .. MORE
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Cross-country Comparisons
Mancur Olson once argued that Germany and Japan grew rapidly after WWII largely because a great deal of bureaucratic deadwood was removed by the war—allowing these defeated nations to rebuild with a more streamlined and efficient economic system. A David Brooks column discusses this theory: In 1982, the economist Mancur Olson set out to explain .. MORE
Austrian Economics
The socialist calculation debate is firmly located within economics. But a look at philosophy can shed light on the kind of insight Ludwig von Mises gave us, and thereby sharpen our understanding of socialism and its problems. It shows what we can know about socialism through conceptual analysis, and what such analysis cannot tell us. .. MORE
Family Economics
At the recent vice-presidential debate between Senator J.D. Vance and Governor Tim Walz, both leaders emphasized that families are America’s backbone. However, they erred in their approach by suggesting that more government involvement could solve families’ challenges. From expanding the child tax credit to advocating for new social programs, their solutions imply that the government .. MORE
Economic Education
4. Econ Log EconLog, run by the Library of Economics and Liberty, includes various contributors sharing ideas on economic theory, public policy, and classical liberal views. This blog offers a place for lively debate and different opinions. (bold in original) This is from Anja Finegan, “The Top Economics Blogs to Follow in 2025,” inomics.com, October 7, 2024. Finegan .. MORE
Microeconomics
Most economists oppose price controls, especially those following a disaster or some other unexpected event (commonly called “anti price-gouging legislation”). However, UMASS–Amherst economist Isabella Weber objects. She tweets: “One of the problems with [the supply and demand diagram] is that it is missing a crucial dimension: time. When it comes to price gouging in emergencies, .. MORE
Business Cycles
Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen are doing a series of podcasts on the economy of the 1970s. A few weeks back, I commented on one of their previous podcasts, which discussed the tricky problem of establishing causality for changes in inflation. Their most recent podcast discusses oil shocks and the business cycle, an area where causality .. MORE
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Browse our archive of posts by author last nameCross-country Comparisons
It won’t take long to answer this question. Therefore most of this post will be devoted to considering why this is even an issue. Consider the following Bloomberg headline and subhead: Who Thinks China’s Not an Economic Powerhouse? China One of the hottest topics at the upcoming global climate conference is whether China should still .. MORE
History of Economic Thought
As I do every year, I get up at about 3:00 a.m. PDT every Columbus Day (aka Indigenous People’s Day or Canadian Thanksgiving) to see who won the Nobel Prize in economics. I then estimate whether I know enough about his, her, or their work to write a piece in the morning for the Wall .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
No Place To Go by Christian Britschgi, Reason, October 15, 2024 Excerpt: In September, the city council of Kalispell, Montana, took the unusual, and likely unprecedented, step of revoking a permit it had given to a local shelter that had allowed it to offer warm beds to the rural community’s homeless during the winter months. .. MORE
Unlike chimpanzees, which acquire the vast majority of their daily calorie intake from easy-to-find foods such as fruit and leaves, early humans occupied a more complex foraging niche, relying on foods they had to either extract (e.g., buried tubers, or nuts inside shells) or hunt. These more complex foraging techniques take time and skill to .. MORE
Frontispiece, Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. This article was inspired by a recent Virtual Reading Group on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, led by Richard Gunderman. Learn more about our Virtual Reading Groups at the Online Library of Liberty. To what field of study would a thoughtful person look to find more joy in life? For .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour by Helmut Schoeck.1 I’ve been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that is equal, where there’d be nothing to envy your neighbor. But there’s always something to .. MORE
A Book Review of The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, by Thomas Philippon.1 The Great Reversal defends a provocative and surprising thesis: the United States has given up on free markets while Europe has embraced them. As a result, Europeans pay less and get more in a lot of industries, like .. MORE
BTW, the USA hit the grand slam of these four factors: Superior institutions ... Superior culture, near entirely populated by immigrants who traveled across an ocean to a land where most of them didn't..
Jim Glass, October 18